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Category: Archived Blog posts from Third Vault on the Left

I love working on new colourways, though it isn't something I do all the time. Especially when it comes to repeatable colourways. Often when I dye for the sake of dyeing or myself I just throw colours together to see what madness comes out of it. This part of my process is very haphazard, but often informs my more structured dyeing. I like to play with colour to see how they combine in a more real way than on a colour palette.

When designing a new colourway I usually have been prompted to think about a Fandom or theme and then I tend to select the first few things that come to mind to take down the research rabbit hole.

So for example when working on the Phat Fiber samples for January with the Theme 'Dragons and Fantasy'. I had originally been thinking about fiery reds browns, colours I don't dye often, but are commonly associated with Dragons and their fire breathing ways. However when it came to dyeing my samples I was suddenly reminded of Eragon by Christopher Paolini and thought it would be nice to play off other colours, so I was guided to his dragon in particular Saphira.

There are a few techniques in the pattern that are not necessarily standard to all jumper patterns, though are really handy to know how to do. There are links to tutorials for all these techniques in the techniques section on the first page.

Short rows

Short rows are a requirement in the pattern to work the shoulder slopes on the back and the front of the jumper. There are many different short row techniques out there including wrap and turn. However the recommended short row method in the pattern is either Japanese short rows or German short row. This is because these methods are simple and less noticeable in the fabric, in fact there are many times that I have gone back to look at my knitting and I can't see where my short rows end, because it blends in so well. Of the two methods in the pattern German short rows are the simplest and easiest to do, they don't require any extra knitting supplies like stitch markers or pins and they are easy to work both when doing the short row and closing it.